Good eggs, bad apples, WFM and RTO

“We have long assumed that those who rise to high office will be ‘good chaps’, knowing what the unwritten rules are and wanting to adhere to them.”

So writes British constitutional historian Peter Hennessy, whose “good chaps” theory of government (or as I’m calling it, good eggs) has been under considerable strain. 

This is not new to managing a business, of course.

We often have to decide whether to structure around good eggs or bad apples. Striking a balance between freedom and regulation is extraordinarily difficult.

To make your business function:

• How many rules do you need?
• How prescriptive do they need to be?
• How stringently will they be monitored?

We’re seeing it play out with Return-To-Office right now. Invitations have morphed into mandates.

Some employers are getting nervous that the freedom they gave their employees to make the decision about how (and where) to best do their work is undermining their authority.

That’s right. Authority.

Because while arguments can be made about productivity and career development, the thing that is really driving this behaviour?

Fear.

Fear that they’ll be taken advantage of. Fear that some employees will exploit the trust they’ve been given. Fear they won’t work as hard as they would have under the employer’s eye.

And guess what? 

Some employees will take advantage of you as their employer. That’s the challenge of recruiting and managing people. There have been and will always be people who do the wrong thing.

But when we structure our businesses for bad apples, we stifle the good eggs.

Learn a new way to manage people using behavioural science.